What’s RescueTime?

RescueTime is a time management &amp; Productivity software firm founded in 2008. The RescueTime program runs in the background of your apparatus measuring tracking and automatically categorizing your activity.

RescueTime is a free app with a premium update That allows more reporting and features like moment input that is offline signal. It delivers a reporting dashboard with your data diced, chopped and sorted into useful graphs that will assist you manage your time.

RescueTime requires time’s tracking you truly track your own time so that, and makes it painless and automatic — you may be conscious of time use.

Nevertheless, there are dozens and dozens of Improvement &amp; time management programs on the Internet. What are the actual pros &amp; cons of RescueTime? Here’s what I’ve noticed through the years.

Disclosure — I receive referral fees from companies Mentioned on this site. Any data or remarks are based on my experience as adviser to a client or a paying client. Mac Rescue

Rescuing Your Period

RescumeTime is a productivity tool at the to reiterate Feel that it helps you enhance your skills. It collects data about the apps and websites you use, and then creates reports based on that info.

To Begin, you create an account and set up a Desktop app on your own personal computer (s) and optionally a mobile program on Android apparatus ) There is no iOS program because the operating system prevents RescueTime from collecting the data it needs to carry out its function. Those programs quietly and invisibly track which apps you use and which sites you visit, in addition to the amount of time you spend on them.

The hard nut to crack is how to make sense of all that information. To get the best results, you must customize your accounts from the RescueTime site and tell the program more about what you consider productive versus unproductive activity. The more you fine-tune it to your specific circumstances, the better your results. For example, someone who works in the financing industry may classify reading financial news on web sites including MarketWatch and FT.com as a productivity job, whereas for me, that is an unproductive use of time.

You can categorize every app and website on a 5-point Scale of very effective, effective, neutral, dependable, and very unproductive. You can also categorize activity into work categorizes. By way of example, I record Google Docs as quite productive, and that I categorized it as Writing, and it will be a subcategory of Design and Composition. Looking at Redfin.com is very distracting when I am trying to function, and I’ve categorized it .

In the desktop app, there is a simple set of controllers That allows you to pause RescueTime for a quarter hour, one hour, or till tomorrow, providing you easy access to switching the app off for days or breaks when you wrap up early.

Privacy

When faced with RescueTime’s proposition–We’ll track All you do and provide you insights about your customs! –some people may, justifiably, be worried about their privacy and the security of information in their own hardware. If you work with sensitive info online or keep sensitive information on your computers and mobile devices, you’ll want to browse RescueTime’s privacy and security statements carefully.

For everyone else, RescueTime’s privacy policy Contains a summary at the top, just a few condensed lines which are worth studying.

If your worries are somewhat more relaxed and you simply don’t Want RescueTime tracking you on the weekend, so you have control over the days and times the program monitors your behaviour. You can easily set it to just watch your activity from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or whatever program suits you.

Reports

I’ve used RescueTime for decades, and that I don’t check my Daily, productivity reports. I like to let the service run in the background so that when I really do want to find a better image of how I’ve been spending my own time, a good quantity of information is waiting for me.

While I do go through the reports, however, they are Magnificent. I love the variety, giving you get numerous ways of understanding your productivity and customs, from bar graphs and pie charts that show lump sums of action, to line things of software you employed.

One simple but effective piece of information RescueTime Supplies is an investigation of when during the day you are inclined to be the most productive. I was not surprised to see that my brain peaks in the morning and slacks off after 2:00 p.m., as that fits pretty well with what I know about my habits. If you’ve never analyzed your productivity, nevertheless, that might be a useful revelation for you, one which might help you schedule your days more .

The longer you use RescueTime Premium, the more useful the Data becomes, because you can see your data daily, week, month, or year. And as you might expect, it is possible to toggle which days and times RescueTime records your action so it turns off automatically on weekends, for example. Mac Rescue

Additional Features

Much of the value you get from RescueTime comes in that which You make of this data and the way you use that data to affect your behavior. Changing behaviour is hard, but getting rich insights does not need to be.

Among those ways RescueTime makes it easy to understand how To interpret all the information that it collects is with a Productivity Pulse score. This daily score, shown as a percentage, comes from calculating the percent of time spent on very productive, effective, neutral, unproductive, and incredibly unproductive tasks. To be clear, no one is advocating you target to get a 100 percent Productivity Pulse score.

A RescueTime blog article explaining the productivity Score notes that the score is 67 percent, and the average is 79 percent. Most people want to do some job that isn’t considered”very productive” during their day. The whole point of using RescueTime will be to help you work out how to concentrate on productive and incredibly productive tasks if you will need to and perhaps save productive tasks for times when your ability to focus has been waning anyway.

Jobs that are less productive are not the Exact Same thing as distractions. RescueTime has a smart and simple attribute for controlling unwanted behaviour, like getting sucked into websites that are deflecting . A feature called FocusTime, when empowered, blocks your ability to access specific websites for a time period you specify. It personalization and requires a little setting up, but it’s quite powerful after it’s ready to deploy. As an example, let us say you wish to finish a report, and also to make progress on it, you need to focus hardcore for the next 30 minutes. It may prevent you from looking posting on Twitter, checking sports scores, or whatever other sites and actions, and switch on FocusTime you deem deflecting.

The RescueTime mobile app has Silence your phone you empower FocusTime. Likewise, you may set up other automation with the help of third party services IFTTTFree in iTunes Store and Zapier to block or silence other distractions. For instance, you may make a rule with IFTTT (it stands for”if this, then that”) that says,”When I empower FocusTime, then mechanically set my Slack standing to active.”

RescueTime also Provides you the Choice to log time computer Idle moment. Whenever RescueTime notices the computer has been idle for several minutes at a row, it pops up a dialogue asking if you were in a meeting, on the phone, taking break, etc, and lets you categorize the idle time accordingly.

Advantages of RescueTime

Here is a Number of the advantages of utilizing RescueTime Over other solutions. Mac Rescue

Feature Set

At its core, RescueTime does one thing — monitor time. If you look at it like this, it’s not unique. Technically, you can do some of the dozens of programs that are free or that with a spreadsheet online.

But RescueTime’s feature set The way that it tracks time and exactly what it does with the information (aka, you you’ll really use).

RescueTime watches that windows now have Activity, looks at times, and the window title the activity in this window. It’s constantly running in the background watching.

Unobtrustive, Automated monitoring that is 100% makes RescueTime rewarding. There is not any friction or hurdle to monitoring time.

Since RescueTime’s tracking feature simplifies that Problem, you’ll have data that is complete, useful & appropriate.

RescueTime’s other attributes focus on making their Core feature. They do not attempt to add on complementary features like time-tracking &amp; charging for freelancers. They do not try to enter any side companies.

They do have a few features Using the monitoring Attribute in an interesting way. By Way of Example, the Get Focused! Feature blocks deflecting sites and/or programs when selected from running.

They have goals and alerts that allow you to pick What when X happens, you want to happen — and RescueTime can do this based on what it’s monitoring.

I also love how RescueTime does Offline Time Tracking. Rather than being required to search and put in it 100% manually, then you select a time interval that’s unlogged and fill in the blank.

You can customize the buttons to make logging Offline time quick and simple.

It’s a feature set — but that What makes it great. It’s straightforward, simple and well-done.

Pricing and Strategies

RescueTime offers two tiers of support: Lite (free) and Premium ($9 a month or $72 annually ). Firms or organizations that are looking to utilize RescueTime across a group of individuals pay the same rate as Premium subscribers.

RescueTime Lite offers Tracked her or his period before. The program monitors which sites and applications you use, and how long spent on or in each of these. You may categorize every program and website you are using on a Productive/Unproductive scale, and RescueTime generates a couple of primary reports showing how you spend your own time. Lite members can set weekly goals, such as”spend hours each week on productive jobs and fewer than Y minutes on unproductive items.” It’s possible to get a weekly report email for you. For reports, you are limited to a three-month history.

Paying subscribers get everything in the Lite program that is free, Plus features and reports, including an infinite report history. Premium comes with alerts you can enable for if you hit goals. You can more accurately log time spent away from the computer, noting whether you’re in a meeting, on a telephone call, or just out to dinner. Additionally, there is a Get Focused alternative, which permits you to block websites that are distracting for a period of time you place. Mac Rescue

Comparing RescueTime’s cost to that of other programs Needs an open mind as few programs do exactly what RescueTime does. Qbserve is one and it charges a flat one-time fee of $40.

We can look at more Apps for freelancers that typically include tools for creating bills. HarvestFree at Harvest is a example. At $12 per individual per month for Premium, it costs more than RescueTime, but it’s a clear return on investment since it helps ensure more accurate billing. How you’ll interpret RescueTime’s reports and make better use of your time as a consequence is not as clear.

Toggl Popular among salespeople, prices $9 a month, and it provides you clear tools for monitoring time spent on jobs with charging clients’ end goal. Toggl does not include its own invoicing tools, but it has several integration options for connecting with additional invoicing services.

A Couple of programs are nearer to RescueTime in what they have to Offer, such as Slife, even though they tend to have fewer features even if they’re free (and Slife is).

Either way — RescueTime is a no-brainer pricing-wise. It’s free to use.

And when you are saved by the reporting/advanced attributes only 1 hour per month then it is paid for itself even if you are simply earning US minimum wage.

RescueTime is an investment which makes sense.

App Quality

A problem with monitoring apps of all types is That they must be on. The”always on” attribute can lead to performance issues on laptops &amp; desktop computers. Battery issues can be caused by it on mobile devices.

But in my experience, RescueTime causes neither. It is running from startup in my Nexus 5x phone, my Windows PC, along with my Macbook Pro. I have never tracked any functionality or battery life problems.

It’s lightweight and well-built.

I like the fact that the cellular app does not demand Heaps of permissions that are ridiculous. It demands access to usage data, but doesn’t attempt to track location, emails, contacts, or some of the privacy violating other programs ask for.

It is quick to set up and syncs with an internet dashboard. It crunches the data quickly if you’re on the Premium program or from next day on the plan, and pulls at the same time.

Reporting

What is the point of information if it can’t be interpreted by you Or put it to use? Mac Rescue

RescueTime’s reports solves this problem — and in Many ways is the whole point of using the program over a spreadsheet.

And best of all, you can dig into the Reporting with filters and overlays to find your habits out.

It to see that the real amount of Time that each job takes.

When I trying to find a marketing agency in Atlanta — The time monitored to Gchats and Instant Messages was astonishing. It altered processes not just for me personally, but also my project supervisors.

Now I’m on my own I can see the exact time I devote to jobs that matter. I am able to build my entire day around those.

And Simply to reiterate Built-in to the software. The Dashboard is really on my default — and even reports are pre-built.

It’s all seamless quick and powerful so that you Aren’t ironically wasting time while assessing your time.

Integrations

One of the selling points of RescueTime is their feature set minimalism. They do something and they do it nicely.

That said — many people using their merchandise Have software needs that are time-based. When it’s staff time monitoring, billing, project management or something your own time demands do not cease with categorization, measuring and tracking.

To resolve that problem, RescueTime’s software Integrates with a assortment of other software. They have guide integrations and an API with applications that is common.

Whether you are a freelancer attempting to incorporate Time tracking into even a project manager that must collate staff member’s time or invoicing applications like FreshBooks, RescueTime will integrate with it.

Cons of RescueTime

Like any software though — RescueTime is neither Perfect nor is it the best fit for everybody. Here is some disadvantages that I’ve noticed over the years. Mac Rescue

Default Get Focused! Categories

In general, RescueTime’s categories good. Sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter are”Very Distracting”…for many people. And for monitoring, RescueTime’s classes are fast &amp; easy to repair.

But RescueTime’s categories can be away with general News, research websites and sites’ subdomains.

I can not use the Get Focused! Functionality for any Task which needs research (aka visiting a lot of different websites).

Paradoxically, the time that I need smart blocking Functionality is when I am doing research for a post

There’s a fine line between this really is productive and When I’m researching This really is distracting. It’d be great to use RescueTime, but the classes aren’t true enough for it to work.

The root issue is the Block Sites work Is not available in reverse (ie, add specific sites to block). I can only add sites to unblock.

And when I’m visiting websites were blocked by dozen — Manually adding them becomes the time wasting.

If You’re Looking for an program that will block only Distracting sites — RescueTime is not it.